Category: Making History

Making History

How One Missing Data Point Can Illustrate a History of Amazigh Exclusion

Elizabeth Pantaleon While many would say that a picture is worth a thousand words, I would argue that one data point can be just as powerful. For that matter, so can the absence of data. An elusive yet illustrative finding that would pack such a punch is the exact cancer incidence rate among Amazigh patients from the Rif region compared to other areas in Morocco. … Continue reading How One Missing Data Point Can Illustrate a History of Amazigh Exclusion

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Making History

What is Liberia to a US Historian? Bicentennial Reflections Part II

Casey Donahue Few nations’ founding loom so large in the American imagination. In US historiography, the pursuit of the Liberian Republic—begun in the early 1820s and realized in 1847—is perhaps the most highly symbolized origin story of any nation that is not the United States. It appears in our national narratives not as a critical study of African state-building, but as a palimpsest, on which … Continue reading What is Liberia to a US Historian? Bicentennial Reflections Part II

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Making History

An Agreeable Liberian History: Bicentennial Reflections Part I

Casey Donahue Liberia is putting a new spin on an old story. A bicentennial marking the arrival of the republic’s first American settlers has elicited proud nostalgia for the civic values they brought with them; but it also conjures painful memories of the unequal and ethnically stratified society they launched. In their quest to reconcile the anniversary’s contentious dual meanings, Liberian leaders have promoted a … Continue reading An Agreeable Liberian History: Bicentennial Reflections Part I

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Making History

Contextualizing “Space” from a Historical Perspective: Tracing the Construction of Cartographic Designs delineating “Us” and “Them”

Krystel von Kumberg Nation-states, as historical sociologist Anthony Smith observed, are “so easily recognizable from a distance, [yet] seem to dissolve before our eyes the closer we come and the more we attempt to pin them down.” As humans, much of how we perceive the world is cartographically suffocated, overly informed by both natural and artificial geographic boundaries. A central feature of the nation-state system … Continue reading Contextualizing “Space” from a Historical Perspective: Tracing the Construction of Cartographic Designs delineating “Us” and “Them”

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Making History

The History of Masculinity in China

Zhanhao Zhang In 2020, during the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, committee member Si Zefu  criticized male teenagers for being too “feminine.” The Ministry of Education responded by promoting physical education and research on the influence of popular culture on the “feminization of male adolescents.” Suddenly, the concept of masculinity (阳刚之气) and its traditional meanings became a hot topic on Chinese social media. Many people, … Continue reading The History of Masculinity in China

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Making History

On Decolonizing Academia

Mariam Aiyad On April 9, 2015, the University of Cape Town removed a statue of Cecil Rhodes from its campus. Since then, the debate about the need to “decolonize academia” has flooded the international scene. Student movements at the University of Cape Town and the University of Oxford, under the hashtag #RhodesMustFall, used their demands for the removal of statues of the British colonialist from … Continue reading On Decolonizing Academia

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Making History

A Conversation on Equity, Inclusion, and History at Georgetown University: PART II – Doing Diversity Work at Georgetown

Casey Donahue At the end of March, I spoke with leaders from the diversity and equity initiatives in Georgetown’s History and Foreign Service departments. The goal of the discussion was to learn how these graduate students understand diversity work in the context of their academic discipline, and how they leverage the study of history in their respective approaches. Joining me from the School of Foreign … Continue reading A Conversation on Equity, Inclusion, and History at Georgetown University: PART II – Doing Diversity Work at Georgetown

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Making History

A Conversation on Equity, Inclusion, and History at Georgetown University: PART I – How do Diversity Advocates Think About History?

Casey Donahue At the end of March, I spoke with leaders from the diversity and equity initiatives in Georgetown’s History and Foreign Service departments. The goal of the discussion was to learn how these graduate students understand diversity work in the context of their academic discipline, and how they leverage the study of history in their respective approaches. Joining me from the School of Foreign … Continue reading A Conversation on Equity, Inclusion, and History at Georgetown University: PART I – How do Diversity Advocates Think About History?

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